The Tide News: Shell’s $20bn projects boost local content in N’Delta

Nelson Chukwudi
Monday, Mar 3, 2008

Shell, the largest oil and gas company in Nigeria, has said that its $20 billion investment in development projects across the Niger Delta would boost local content aspiration of Nigerians in the most critical sector of the economy.

These investments have 60 per cent Nigerian stake in ownership and also staffed by more than 80 per cent indigenous people.

In addition, the projects, located essentially in Rivers, Bayelsa and Delta states, among others, are projected to provide direct employment to 15,000 skilled and semi-skilled people while also leveraging local service industries thousands of indirect employment opportunities.

Making these revelations at an interface session with the media in Port Harcourt last Friday, Shell’s General Manager, Local Content Development, Dr. Eddie Wikina, said some of the projects making a statement in the LCD regime were the Front End Engineering Design (FEED) and Detailed Engineering of the H-Block Integrated facility on the shallow water off Bonny in Rivers, the Gbaran/Ubie Integrated Project in Bayelsa, the proposed Bonga South West facility in the deepwater off Delta State and the deepwater study centre in Lagos.

Dr. Wikina said that massive swamp and shallow water construction and services were on-going in Onne, Rivers and Warri, Delta just as onshore and deepwater construction services were being carried out simultaneously in Port Harcourt and Lagos, for the projects.

The general manager noted that the Afam and Cawthorne Channel integrated projects, among others, have also contributed to the local content development efforts of the leading oil and gas company.

According to him, the company has developed, approved and communicated the Nigerian content policy directives to all staff and contractors in addition to the maintenance of a Nigerian content web page in both Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company (SNEPCO) and Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) to create awareness of the necessity for compliance with the Federal Government policy amongst stakeholders.

Dr. Wikina stated that Shell had recorded an overall performance rate of 53 per cent local content application in all its activities in 2007, and was poised to achieve the 70 per cent Federal Government target by 2010 for industry contracts.

He stressed that already, more than 95 per cent of Shell staff were Nigerians, particularly from the Niger Delta while more than 70 per cent of Nigerians were top and middle managers as vice presidents, directors, general managers and managers.

The Shell general manager noted that although, meeting the government’s target has been challenging but said the company had achieved 53 per cent performance in terms of contract value to local contractors in 2007, and may hit 70 per cent by 2010, adding that Shell has achieved 60 per cent Nigerian content in wells contracts valued more than $1 billion.

Other areas where the company has made significant milestones include, drilling rigs, drilling fluids, drilling waste management, directional drilling/survey, drilling tools, wellheads and Christmas Tree, well services, integrated completions services, fabrications, construction works and engineering designs.

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